The lawsuit that resulted in the Supreme Court’s 1954 Brown v. Board of Education ruling was filed by 13 parents on behalf of their 20 children in Topeka, Kansas. The named plaintiff, Oliver Brown, was a welder for the Santa Fe Railroad and an assistant pastor at his church. His daughter Linda, who lived 7 blocks from a white school, had to walk 6 blocks to ride a school bus to the black school a mile away. Read more about race relations in Topeka 100 years ago in Tazia and Gemma (see NOVELS).
